Breaking news: Fallon gone
Is this what sends oil to $110, if only briefly?
In any event, this didn't take long to go down: Less than a week after the head of U.S. military operations across the Middle East got written up in Esquire as basically opposing an American attack on Iran, he's toast:
Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. military commander for the Middle
East, is resigning, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.Gates said that Fallon had asked him for permission to retire and that Gates agreed.
"I
believe he has made the right decision," Gates told reporters at the
Pentagon. He called Fallon a very able military strategist and said he
will be missed.
Fallon's farewell statement included the usual blather about how the article had proven a distraction. Gates dismisses any talk of Fallon's departure signaling a change in U.S. policy as "ridiculous." We shall see; a successor is yet to be named. By one expert's reckoning, Team Bush's window of opportunity for an attack is rapidly closing.
Update: Investigative reporter Spencer Ackerman says this looks to him like a resignation on principle — a chilling prospect given Fallon's reported assertion that he would not allow an attack on Iran to happen on his watch.
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